Anne Nicolas has announced the availability of the first beta release of Mageia 2: "We are now entering the last run for Mageia 2 release - the first beta is now available for tests. The beta step is essential as it will focus on fixing bugs and improving integration for all distributions. This is now also the main focus for our packagers team. They are waiting for your reports! Major new features: stable glibc 2.14.1; latest stable release of kernel 3.2.6; dracut as tool for creating initrds (initial ramdisk used during boot); KDE 4.8.0; GNOME 3.3.x with the target of reaching 3.4.x for final release; up-to-date LXDE packages, including PCManFM 0.0.10; Pencil-Planner 0.4.4b, a traditional animation software package; Amarok 2.5 and Cantata 0.3.0 music players.... See the brief release announcement and the much more detailed release notes for a complete list of improvements and new features. Download (mirrors) the installation DVD images (the live CDs are not yet available): Mageia-2-beta1-i586-DVD.iso (3,418MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-2-beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,465MB, MD5, torrent).

Mageia is a fork of Mandriva Linux formed in September 2010 by former employees and contributors to the popular French Linux distribution. Unlike Mandriva, which is a commercial entity, the Mageia project is a community project and a non-profit organisation whose goal is to develop a free Linux-based operating system.

Donald Stewart has announced the release of Mageia 5.1, an updated build of the distribution current stable branch. This unscheduled version was put together due to delays delivering the upcoming Mageia 6 which is currently in development. From the release announcement: "We are very pleased to announce the release of Mageia 5.1. This release is a respin of the Mageia 5 installation and live ISO images, based on the Mageia 5 repository and incorporating all updates to allow for an up-to-date installation without the need to install almost a year-and-a-half worth of updates. It is therefore recommended for new installations and upgrades from Mageia 4. If you are currently running Mageia 5 then there is no need to install Mageia 5.1 as it is the same as your system, provided that updates have been installed. Mageia 5.1 ships with many updated packages, including LibreOffice 4.4.7, Linux kernel 4.4.32, KDE4 4.14.5, GNOME 3.14.3 and countless other updates." See also the release notes for detailed technical information. Download links: Mageia-5.1-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,815MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5.1-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,622MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5.1-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,745MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

The Mageia team has announced the availability of a new development release, Mageia 6 Dev 1. The development snapshot features version 4.4.5 of the Linux kernel, Plasma 5.5.95, GNOME 3.19.2, LibreOffice 5.1 and Firefox 45. "After the delays caused by upgrading the major parts of the base system and switching to the Plasma 5 desktop environment, we are very happy to announce that the first development milestone of Mageia 6 has been released and is ready for testing by the community. Note that only the classical ISO images have been released, those being the i586 and x86_64 DVD images. The live ISO images are not quite ready. If the live images can be made functional soon, they may also be released, otherwise they will come with the next milestone release. The extra time we have had has allowed for newer versions of Plasma, GNOME, and other major components. Also, it has allowed us to provide support for newer hardware thanks to an updated kernel." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement. Download (pkglist): Mageia-6-dev1-x86_64-DVD.iso (4,422MB, MD5, torrent, signature).

Rémi Verschelde has announced the release of Mageia 5. Mageia is a community distribution which started as a fork of the Mandriva project, but which now operates as an independent distribution. "After more than one year of development, the Mageia community is very proud to finally deliver this long-awaited release, Mageia 5. This release announcement is a big sigh of relief, an `At last!' that comes straight from the heart of the weary - tired as one can be after long days of hard but rewarding work. And still, we chose to take our time to fix major issues and have a high quality release, without rushing it. Maybe our best release so far, taking into account the impressive work that was done on the installer, both to add new features and to get rid of old bugs." The new release features UEFI support (though not Secure Boot), version 3.19 of the Linux kernel, KDE 4.14 and GNOME 3.14. Cinnamon, MATE, Plasma, LXQt and Xfce desktop are also available. Installation media, live discs and a network install ISO are offered as download options. More information on the new version of Mageia can be found in the project's release announcement, the release notes and errata. Download (pkglist): Mageia-5-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,748MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,552MB, MD5, torrent).

Rémi Verschelde has announced the availability of the release candidate for the upcoming stable release of Mageia 5 - now complete with support for UEFI systems and improved installer: "And we've all waited long enough for Mageia 5 RC - go grab it! While you wait for the download to complete, all restless and eager that you are to try this new release, let's talk a bit about this release candidate. What can you expect from it and why did it take so long? Mageia's developers have been hard at work during this release cycle to add UEFI support to our installer, while the QA contributors were thoroughly testing everything that they could on their hardware. We are now proud to announce that you can install Mageia on UEFI systems fairly easily, using either our live media or the classical installer (except for the dual-DVD which does not support UEFI). This is now the trial by fire for the main feature of Mageia 5 - if you have a UEFI system, please try this release candidate in as many configurations as possible." Read the release announcement and release notes for more details. Download: Mageia-5-RC-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,737MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-RC-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,546MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-RC-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,732MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Anne Nicolas has announced the availability of the third beta of the upcoming stable release of Mageia 5: "The release date was a close call between Friday the 13th and Valentine's day... but finally, Mageia 5 beta 3 is available for tests. The road was long and strewn with pitfalls, but the Mageia community is just great and the ISO images are finally available. After a looooong meeting dedicated to reviewing all release critical bugs, a lot of fixes were released that allowed us to finalize the beta 3. EFI is now supported properly on all 64-bits ISO images, but we still need your feedbacks on this. This is now the home stretch. We do need your help more than ever. Please report any problems that you experience in the forums, mailing lists or, preferably, in Bugzilla." See the brief release announcement and read the detailed release notes for more information. Download: Mageia-5-beta3-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,740MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta3-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,555MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta3-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,713MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Claire Revillet has announced the availability of the delayed second beta build of Mageia 5, with further delays leading to the final release: "After several delays the beta 2 of Mageia 5 is finally out. But it seems that, yet again, we need to postpone the Mageia 5 release. Due to various difficulties with EFI boot, GRUB 2 and a few other things, we need a little more time. Only a few members of our QA team have EFI-based machines, so if you do have such equipment please test beta 2 and report your experience. Our QA, packagers and ISO teams are working around the clock to bring us all a stable and secure release, but they still need to work out a few kinks. Therefore, we are planning one more beta release before the release candidate." Here is the brief release announcement, with technical details provided in the release notes. Download: Mageia-5-beta2-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,705MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta2-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,546MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta2-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,776MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Rémi Verschelde has announced the availability of the delayed first beta release of Mageia 5: "It has been a long road, longer than we anticipated, but we're almost there. Mageia 5 Beta 1 is now validated! What took so long (a month and a half longer than originally planned)? The short explanation: some stuff went wrong and other things got broken. The long one: back in September, we decided to update our package manager, RPM, to its latest upstream version 4.12. This was done shortly before our planned mass rebuild, a necessary step before the beta where we rebuild all packages in the distribution to make sure that they are still compatible with the current state of our development stack. Usually, mass rebuilds show that a fair number of packages do not build any more." Continue to the release announcement for a detailed explanation and see the release notes for technical aspects. Download: Mageia-5-beta1-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,623MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta1-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,513MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-beta1-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,940MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

Anne Nicolas has announced the availability of the second alpha release of Mageia 5: "While many of us are having some well-deserved rest, the Mageia team is still on the deck and working on the Mageia 5 development. This second development release is a big step towards Mageia 5, since most of the core packages have now been updated to their latest stable versions: Linux kernel 3.15.6, X.Org 1.16 and Mesa 10.2.5 for some of the biggest ones. There has also been some important work done towards packaging KDE frameworks 5 (technological foundation for KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications 5) and LXQt for Mageia 5 - feel free to try them out, and don't hesitate to report bugs or discuss them on our dev mailing list." See the release announcement and release notes for further details. Download the live or installation DVD images from here: Mageia-5-alpha2-LiveDVD-KDE4-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,588MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-alpha2-LiveDVD-GNOME-x86_64-DVD.iso (1,453MB, MD5, torrent), Mageia-5-alpha2-x86_64-DVD.iso (3,761MB, MD5, torrent).

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